A stingy or ungenerous person; one who is or is behaving niggardly. Despite popular belief, the word is actually historically considered highly offensive. Should not be confused with the word nigger, which is also highly offensive, but in a different way. In everyday speech, the two words sound nearly identical, so it's a good rule of thumb to save the word for print. It's considered pretty archaic anyway, so it's probably not a good idea to use it in any context unless you want to offend someone who has a less developed vocabulary.